ACTION 1: ELIMINATE YOUR DISTRACTIONS
What are you doing just before your sales conversations? Many overscheduled sellers are on a phone call, on their computers, or reading their email until the moment they pick up the phone or walk through the buyer’s door. They shuffle through papers and check one last time for important calls or messages.
This habit is dangerous. What is most important at that moment is the conversation you are going to have next. That’s why Waiting starts with you stopping. Stopping what? Everything else.
Eliminate distractions so you can be mentally present in your conversations, whether by phone or in person. Turn off your cell phone, turn off your computer screen, physically move away from your desk, or close your door. These precautions will eliminate your distraction, reduce the temptation to multitask, and make it easier to keep your conversation focused where it belongs: on your buyer.
Juggling fast-paced schedules, technology, and multiple expectations leaves many of us stretched for time. We then seek ways to get more done and may adopt the belief that if we work on several things simultaneously—if we multitask—we are more efficient. This is why I often hear sellers brag about how good they are at multitasking and jokingly comment that it works well for them because they have an attention deficit disorder (ADD) personality. (However, I notice that I don’t hear top sellers saying this.)
Many people think that we increase our productivity by working on several things at the same time. Yet research by Dr. Edward Hallowell, a Massachusetts-based psychiatrist, calls this belief in the efficiencies of multitasking a myth. “It’s the great seduction of the information age,” he said in an interview on cnet.com in 2008. “You can create the illusion of doing work and of being productive and creative when you’re not. You’re just treading water.” Hallowell’s research found that multitasking actually decreases productivity and gives us a false sense of what we are really accomplishing.
In his book titled CrazyBusy (Ballantine Books, 2006), Hallowell calls multitasking a “mythical activity in which people believe they can perform two or more tasks simultaneously.” In an article published in the Harvard Business Review in January 2005, he describes a new condition that mimics ADD, called “attention deficit trait,” which he says is “purely a response to the hyperkinetic environment in which we live.” (It seems we aren’t all ADD after all; it’s our response to the activity and rush around us.)
“Never in history has the human brain been asked to track so many data points,” writes Hallowell. Yet this challenge “can be controlled only by creatively engineering one’s environment and one’s emotional and physical health.” Limiting your multitasking is essential to achieve the highest levels of productivity and success.
How do we lose so much productivity? Through the time-wasting inefficiencies created by multitasking—and the amount of time lost may surprise you. In 2005, office workers took an average of twenty-five minutes to get back on task after an interruption such as a phone call or answering emails, according to researchers at the University of California at Irvine who monitored these interruptions. Twenty-five minutes of less effective efforts, even after an interruption of just two or three minutes! Think of the number of interruptions we have in a day and do the math; that’s a lot of lost time.
If you are thinking, “I would never get anything done if I only focused on one task at a time,” you aren’t alone. We are multitaskers by nature, and some of the multitasking is very effective for us. We can walk and talk at the same time. We can talk to a buyer and access our CRM system for information. We can eat and read the newspaper or our newsfeeds—and although I find that I can’t remember what I ate, at least I am accomplishing two tasks at the same time.
Multitasking hurts us most when we try to complete two or more tasks that need mental effort at the same time. We cannot break from a mentally challenging task, such as putting together pricing or a recommendation for a buyer, or taking a phone call, and immediately return to the same level of focus and productivity. We lose something in the process—time, an idea, clarity. We then lose the opportunity to give the highest value to everything we are doing.
While this research provides proof to what many of us experience, I do run into the skeptics who challenge the research and argue that it doesn’t take twenty-five minutes for them to refocus. When I suggest they personally test the research, and they do so, they acknowledge that it’s true. It’s why Jason, a client, learned that a straightforward task like inputting customer information into his CRM, begun at 8:15 A.M., wasn’t finished until 3:30 P.M. Constant distractions kept him from finishing the top item on his to-do list for nearly the entire workday.
Consider how multitasking affects your selling efforts. When your mind is attempting to focus on other tasks—different buyers, reports you need to complete, a meeting with your manager, or your travel arrangements—it reduces your effectiveness in your conversations and all your actions.
How then do we focus and complete our tasks? Create new habits that eliminate distractions before our sales conversations.
First, identify the common disruptions that keep you from preparing and focusing. Make a note of these disruptions, each time one occurs, for an entire day. Next, determine their importance in the context of your sales efforts—an interruption from your main buyer may be justified, less so those from emails or a coworker. Then develop a plan to eliminate these distractions. Here are some tips for doing so.
Prioritize Each Morning
Address the most important items first, including your preparation for sales calls. A powerful reminder to tackle your most important or challenging tasks first begins with the Mark Twain quote, “Eat a live frog every morning, and nothing worse will happen to you the rest of the day.” Best-selling author Brian Tracy used this quote in his book, Eat That Frog (Berrett-Koehler Publishers, 2007), suggesting you complete the toughest task first each day to release the energy you would spend on avoiding or thinking about that task the rest of the day. It’s easy to think we should tackle the little things first, or knock them out of the way to shorten our list of tasks; however, the big or tough thing occupies our mind and causes us to waste energy and time.
Schedule Time for Preparation
Schedule a specific block of time each day on your calendar for preparation. Oliver, a seller in the consumer products industry, learned quickly how this pays off. He reports that his scheduled block of thirty minutes daily has become invaluable and has led to more efficient conversations—including a typical one-hour weekly meeting successfully concluding in under forty minutes!
Minimize the Inflow
Reduce the number of times your emails are loaded on your computer and on your handheld gadgets. Although most software settings load your messages every three to five minutes, you can change this. When Alice Kemper of Sales Training Consultants changed her settings to receive her emails just once an hour, I thought she was crazy until I saw what it did for her productivity, focus, and quality. Now she is more in control of her time and schedule. While this won’t work for everyone, I’ve found great benefits from thirty minutes of uninterrupted computer time. Unless we have life-or-death matters being emailed to us, why do we need to be interrupted every few minutes with the latest message?
Put Down Your Smartphone
The use of smartphones with their immediate access to email and updates on social media has created a false sense of urgency. Evaluate how often this information helps you with what you need to focus on in the next hour. Then reconsider your need to keep your smartphone on at all times; reduce the frequency of your updates from social media sites and how often you check your cell phone for text messages.
Ask for Time to Finish
When interrupted by someone, ask permission to finish your thought or action or to make a note. Say something like, “Hello, good to hear from you. Can you give me a minute to finish the sentence I was typing so I can then focus on you?” Of course, you should adapt that message to your Tribal Type and situation. Most callers will oblige, and if they don’t, then you know it is urgent (if only in their minds).
Multitasking is a bad habit of mine that’s difficult to break. When I began to focus on cutting back my multitasking actions, I found it was not just tough for me but also for those around me. They weren’t used to me asking for a few minutes to complete something or to schedule time for a discussion. My family struggles with my lack of immediate response as well. They still expect me to react immediately to any interruption, urgent or not.
This new practice of asking for time to finish something lets me complete quality work in shorter periods of time. When I slip into old habits, immediately reacting to everything coming at me, I quickly notice the effect on my conversation success, my ability to fully complete tasks, and my stress level.
Though no one can schedule and control every distraction, we have more control over our multitasking than we think. If you don’t respond to someone’s email in the next three minutes, will anything earth-shattering happen? Probably not. Resisting that distraction should make you more productive with the time you otherwise would have lost.
Once you have eliminated distractions in the Wait step, it’s time to turn your focus to Them.